Camberwell Now

Camberwell Now was formed in 1982 by Charles Hayward , Trefor Goronwy and Stephen Rickard shortly after the demise of This Heat , with which group the aforementioned were all linked – Hayward (drums/vocals) as a founder member, Goronwy as bassist/vocalist on the final This Heat tour, and Rickard as the band’s sound engineer. Their first release, the Meridian EP, resulted from what had originally been a Hayward solo project, upon the completion of which the newly formed unit faced the intriguing challenge of playing live with a line-up consisting of drums, bass and a sound technician. The use of tape manipulation had been very much at the heart of Meridian, and a method had to be found to incorporate this onstage in something other than a haphazard manner, and without resorting to the use of “backing tapes”. The answer to this conundrum was Stephen Rickard’s “Cassette Switchboard”, an original and possibly to this day unique method of switching between several freely-running tapes which could contain anything from musical drones (notes, chords, whatever) to field recordings to slowed down metal sheets being banged together to whatever one could imagine. For more on this see the article included with the recently remastered All’s Well (2006) , a compilation of most of the band’s recorded output. In all, Camberwell Now released two EPs (the aforementioned Meridian and Greenfingers), one album The Ghost Trade, and made contributions to various compilations. They toured regularly between their formation and the late 80s. Maria Lamburn joined the band in late 1985, featuring on the Greenfingers EP and on tour, until the band split in 1987. Upon their demise, Hayward and Goronwy were heard again together on the former’s solo album Survive the Gesture. Charles Hayward has since been involved in a wide variety of projects, both solo and collaborative. Trefor Goronwy disappeared for years to Russia, as a result of which he became involved with Tuvan throat-singing ensemble Huun-Huur-Tuu, and is currently working on new solo material incorporating instruments from former Soviet Central Asia (igil, kobyz). Stephen Rickard has since been pursuing other interests.